After sending a very vicious and scathing e-mail to Adobe, I managed to get a fairly curt response pointing to an obscure and vague ‘Troubleshooting’ page on Adobe’s website that gives direct links to the flash player download WITHOUT having to use GetPlusPlus.
I’ve coined a new phrase for this type of seedy tactic of ‘bundling’ software. I call it ‘shitware’. Forget ‘crapware’, as that’s way above this load of shitware. Shitware is the type of software that makes you wonder ‘why the fuck did they bother!?’.
Its the lowest of the low, the bottom of the barrel and its primary characteristic that differentiates it from mere ‘crapware’ is that its ubiquitous so we can’t really ‘ignore’ it without losing out on something like being able to watch YouTube videos. I’d say YouTube is one of the main reasons Flash is so damned popular.
All I can say? Hell fucking yeah. This is how you get results, by cussing them the fuck out till they realize their stupidity and handle things properly. Lets only hope that enough people cuss Adobe out that they manage to get rid of ‘GetPlusPlus’ altogether.
–Click here for the actual ‘technote’
–Click here for direct download for non-IE browsers
–Click here for a guide to uninstalling the Adobe Flash Player
Please be aware that if you do downgrade your Flash, just be damned sure you have a good set of security software to avoid known security issues with older versions of Flash.
–Avira Antivirus
–Comodo Firewall (install only the firewall during installation)
–Firefox with the Flashblock addon to make sure nasty flash doesn’t get through. There’s also a portable version of Firefox if you have an aversion to installing things.
-You can also try the AdBlock Plus addon for even more security and privacy on the web.
**************UPDATE**************
Due to an overwhelming response and traffic to this blog regarding this issue, I’ve gone ahead and put a step by step install and uninstall guide to getting what you want without the crapware. This is a guide if you’re using Firefox on Windows, since Macs are ‘easy like a cheap slut’ and Linux people, by virtue of being able to install the Linux distro of their choice without their computer imploding, should be easily able to figure things out on their own or searching the net for it.
Installing Flash without the shitware:
1 – Get Adobe Flash here.
2 – Remove the checkbox next to “Free McAfee Security Scan (optional)” to make sure that shitware doesn’t install
3 – Very carefully read the light-grey text that says: “Adobe may use the Adobe Download Manager to seamlessly install your software.”
4 – Click the yellow button marked ‘Agree and Install Now’ after you make SURE there’s no checkmark next to the McAffee Security Scan.
5 – If you’re using Firefox, it “prevented this site from asking you to install software”. So just leave that alone.
6 – Click on the link that says “Your download will start automatically. If it does not start, click here to download.”
7 – Flash 10 will now install WITHOUT any crapware.
Uninstall/Removal of the shitware if its already infected your computer:
1 – Go to Add/Remove Programs and remove the ‘Mozilla GetPlusPlus’ plugin there.
2 – Once this is complete, do a ‘Find File’ search for the file named ‘np_gp.dll’ and delete it if you find it. Sometimes an ‘uninstall’ doesn’t really do its job.
3 – God help you if you want to uninstall the McAfee shitware. Its beyond the scope of this guide and I damn guarantee its a lot more convulated to completely remove it then to simply use ‘Add/Remove Programs’.
Here’s what McAfee has to say about its shitware. Yes, you read that right, its a program that pretty much duplicates the much-more-widely-supported functionality in ‘Windows Security Center‘ that’s enabled by default in WinXP Home and Vista, only they instead shove their McAfee shitware on you. I wouldn’t be surprised if it just reads the information from that API and just displays it in their own window. I might see if the program even runs when you disable Windows Security Center, lol.
Seasonal Madness 
17 Comments
OMFG, I could not believe the type of crap they’re pulling with this. I was installing this onto my gf’s grandmother’s PC and NOT ONLY DOES IT NOT WORK and wastes bandwidth downloading files which end up being corrupted files, IT DOESN’T DISABLE WHEN YOU TELL IT TO.
With it “disabled”, the bloody thing kept getting in a cyclical lock and freeze up Firefox whenever I opened it, ie: FF opens, seconds later the Adobe DLM shows up (WTF?!), and Firefox freezes…. clear the DLM after it says it has a corrupted download, but it doesn’t unfreeze Firefox when it disappears! FF is still frozen and STAYS frozen. So, End Task, reload FF, stupid Adobe DLM shows up again, rinse, lather, repeat.
I actually had to load Safe Mode to get into the browser, which is when I figured it had to be a stupid plugin that is completely ignoring it.
This thing isn’t even written by Adobe, but they’re going to have to eat the crap for it. getPlusPlus (and whoever NOS Microsystems is) may have written it, but they are certainly less at fault than Adobe is for forcing people to download it.
So, the moral of the story is:
1. don’t FORCE people to use third-party software that complicates things. If it’s good, people will use it. If it’s crap, you’ll get the signals right away,
2. don’t use third-party software unless you’ve thoroughly tested it, because if it doesn’t work, it’s most certainl not the third party who will be eating the brunt of it, which leads to…
3. don’t put your name on third-party crap unless you’re willing to put your name on the line, because this is exactly the soft of thing that makes things look bad for companies.
The only sane reason I can think of that they’re using this crap is because they’re getting a discount from Akamai or whoever is doing their download crap…
I wish that someone at Adobe would actually bother to read all the negative feedback they’ve generated. If you all would be so kind as to tell as many people as you could about this issue, refer them here to make comments, and I’ll do my best to make sure someone at Adobe actually reads these things.
I took the liberty of doing my own little ‘investigation’. I have a friend who knows a friend at Adobe and based on what they’ve heard, it seems this decision was made by management to include ‘getplusplus’ was merely a way for them to push out ‘updates’ much easier and ‘auto-update’ people because what was happening was that people were turning off the already-built-in auto update (cause its the worst thing ever when it pops up) so they wanted to use this as a way to push it out regardless, essentially bypassing people’s preferences. One quote…’those f-in users are just full of shit, and sometimes you have to shove the patches down their throats’. Which is exactly the type of attitude I’d expect from the people who approved this crap.
If you don’t wanna comment here, then try Adobe’s Web Feedback form. It might even get you a response!
Adobe sucks butt!! There getPlus is nothing short of pure asshole ware.Thanks for link to get Flash without their spy-shitware.
Much obliged, and though there were other spots to get the same information, they were buried deep in forum threads and I was one of the few people that figured its better to have very easily accessible and readable access to the alternative methods of obtaining Flash.
I’m going to eventually just clean out my computer completely, reinstall, and then make an image before installing anything, including Flash, and then make a 2nd ‘daily’ image. Go Go DriveImageXML! Works like a dream, and copies byte-by-byte of each and every sector of a hard drive partition. Very handy.
As it is, I’m still using the ‘portable’ version of the latest Firefox so I’ll likely end up getting the ‘full’ version once I reinstall, which will have to be after I get things settled down a bit. ^^
Crazy. I am Flash / Flex developer, and had to reinstall my system due to a HD crash, and now i get this fuck onto my freshly installed system as one of the very first things – already while setting up my workspace.
of course i didnt pay much attention – because never in the world would i have guessed that now even Adobe is involved in shitware. OMFG, really
Whoever had the idea for this, and was probably paid better than most of us, should be fired. Eeverybody who approved the idea as well. Hah.
I agree
Hello from Russia!
Can I quote a post in your blog with the link to you?
You’re more then welcome to do so. ^_^
I’m just happy to get the word out about this ‘shitware’ that’s been bundled with Adobe Flash.
In case anyone couldn’t find “Mozilla GetPlusPlus” in their Add/Remove Programs list in Windows but still had Adobe getPlusPlus listed in their Firefox plugins list: It showed up as “Adobe Download Manager” in my Add/Remove Programs.
I might’ve had just an old enough or new enough version that (a) I had disabled the plugin and it actually respected the setting and (b) they called it something else in the programs list.
Thank you, seasonalmadness, for helping me root out the last of my unwanted plugins. I’d gotten rid of Microsoft’s DRM plugins and their 3.5 .NET WFP plugin, and this was the only one left. Hurrah for a cleaner, less corrupted Firefox. 🙂
No problem. ^_^
Have you had any issues with Flash in general using Firefox?
I’m using the portable version of Firefox and have had nothing but crap to deal with ever since upgrading to Flash 10.
Disclaimer: I highly advise people NOT to edit their registry unless they know EXACTLY what they’re doing. To my knowledge, the Adobe uninstaller should be responsible for deleting the necessary registry keys. CCleaner has also had its own issues in the past (a simple Google search will reveal that) and I can’t endorse that product. Many ‘registry cleaners’ only end up causing issues rather then ‘fixing’ things. The best practice, IMHO, is to start off with a clean full fresh install, then add in your specific computer drivers for video, audio, motherboard, and so on. After that, create a ‘fresh install’ image backup and then install whatever programs you use on a daily basis, as well as customizing the computer to how you want things. Make another backup image, and then your final backup image should be a once-a-week (or even once-per-day) backup where if worse comes to worse you can restore your computer back to pristine condition. I recommend googling for ‘Windows Ultimate Boot CD’ and burning a copy of that, as it has utilities for backup and other nice stuff (virus scanning, etc)..
ah, i have getplusplus in mozilla plugins and it isn’t in anyway in remove programs, not as getplusplus and not as download manager. what can i do?
and somebody help me please. after 10 version got my cpu 100% and as a result i couldn’t do anything at all on computer, it was removed by me and replaced by other versions one after another. Finally i stopped on 8 version for ie, and for firefox found the flashblocker(wish have found sooner). the thing is , after installing flashblocker one of my favorite sites stop working, no matter what i am doing(listing it as allowed site, disabling flashblocker, removing flashblocker, reinstalling flash player 8, 9, 10…)
can someone help me? this flashpalyer is really a crap. I wish someone makes an alternative flashplayer for mozilla(((
this is the site i am talking about
http://guzei.com/online_radio/listen.php?online_radio_id=1479
any help would be appreciated.
Thank you and sorry for my english, it isn’t native language for me.
Lena, your English is fine, don’t worry about it. ^_^
The site you listed has some type of custom plugin that isn’t recognized by Firefox, at least when I tried it then it wasn’t allowing me to do anything, it just said missing plugin but couldn’t identify which plugin I needed.
I can’t read Russian so you’ll need to tell me what plugin it is that they require so that I’m able to give ya a link to the place to get the plugin.
Flashblock is good and I also recommend going to Adobe’s site to set your privacy preferences and so on when you do install Flash.
I’ve noticed that Flash really is a crapton slower then it used to be, Adobe seems to have actually made the quality of their product worse then before.
In your specific case I’d recommend completely removing whatever version of Flash you currently have installed and then reinstaling whatever version you want and sticking with it.
Again the site you linked doesn’t seem to work even on my computer so it may be a site problem and not a Firefox or Flash problem.
seasonalmadness
Hi:)Thank you for complimenting my english, i am learning a lot and I hope to sit for toefl in some time in the future. ))
It turns out it was a windows media player plagin(and firefox for some reason couldn’t recognize it, strange, isn’t it?)
On the other problem, found no solution with flash, no matter what version, it slows both opera and Firefox soo much.
Strange that nbodody have developed an alternative to adobe flash. All other products have dozens of alternatives.!?
I just hope they will make some alternative plugin for flash. In opera now I am surfing with plugins turned off, and mozilla has flash blocked permanently.
Thanks for your reply)
It was nice to find a block about a problem that showed me that other people have the same problem and it isn’t just me in this situation. I hope someone will take notice of this and do something regarding the problem.
Here is an official Mozilla article about using WMP in Firefox.
Now as far as flash is concerned, it will run slowly because of the changes that Adobe did to Flash v10 to make it do all sorts of dev-related tricks that nobody really asked for or wanted specifically.
Sites like YouTube are the primary reason that most people even have Flash installed, and for Adobe to screw it up is just really saddening. Flash runs slowly on my computer and on every computer I’ve seen.
The best way to make sure Flash doesn’t slow down your computer is to make sure you only one on tab to play Flash content and not play Flash in more then one tab. Its silly and wasn’t an issue before but it is now.
I don’t believe Adobe will care unless they either get a ton of negative media feedback or unless they have some monetary incentive to fix things.
There’s no alternative to Flash that I’m aware of, but I’m sure if the problem persists then the open-source community can find some way to work around this issue with an older version of Flash. The only issues are that using older versions of Flash may have security issues that could be exploited (unless you use the FlashBlock addon of course) on certain unsavory websites.
This registry information is intentionally bad and designed to cause you trouble. This guy should be put out of his misery.
Never accept anonymous registry change suggestions.
Thanks for the advice! I’ve gone ahead and erred on the side of caution as you advised. If the commentator or anyone else wants to submit registry edits then they should be prepared to offer some type of proof that it works. I’ve left my previous disclaimer there and again I highly advise people NOT to manually edit anything in the registry unless you know EXACTLY what you’re doing, period.
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